Model aircraft able to do what dogs, volunteers, and helicopters could not

After authorities spent three days searching for a missing, elderly man in Wisconsin, a hobbyist launched his personal drone in a volunteer search effort and was able to locate the lost individual 20 minutes post launch.

During the initial search phase, authorities used dogs, helicopters, and employed local volunteers to comb the Fitchburg countryside in search of Guillermo DeVenecia, an 82-year-old man suffering from Alzheimers. David Lesh, a drone enthusiast who uses his personal model aircraft to make videos for his skiing and snowboarding business, was in town visiting his girlfriends family when he learned of the community-wide search. He decided to join in and use his drone to look at areas the missing man may have wandered into.

20 minutes after takeoff, Lesh spotted DeVencia stumbling around in a bean field.

Fortunately, a medical check showed DeVencia was only mildly dehydrated, despite having been gone for some 72 hours. During the post-discovery interview, DeVencia stated that he thought he had only been out for a short walk.

This feel-good story comes at an interesting time for drone technology as a whole, as it was only just recently that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lost a court case brought by Texas-based firm EquuSearch, which had employed the use of small drones in its rescues missions (the company was barred by the FAA from the use of unmanned aircraft for commercial purposes in 2007).

Further driving the point home that drones could actually be useful and shouldnt necessarily be limited under a blanket ban, in March 2014 a US court found that the FAAs barring of the commercial use of drone was illegal because it had not done enough to solicit comment from the public.

While the FAA is appealing this decision, it has stated that representatives will take a closer look at rules governing drones, with the goal of having new laws in place by the end of 2015.

I take a 2nd amendment approach to this as well. Citizens need to be able to have them too. Current laws concerning privacy and harassment, etc, can still apply to these, but we should be able to develop businesses with them and just tinker.

They will not ban them for hobby use but they will draw the line for commercial use and require some kind of licensing or regulations.

Otherwise, if you know the folks like I do, every damn one of them will trying to make money with their toys in order to pay for their hobby. The FAA controls the airspace over the US from ground level to ???? way up yonder and they are not about to let 50,000 drones wonder around with no control whatsoever. All it is going to take is for one of these idiots to have a fatal collision with an aircraft for their fun world to come to a screeching halt. It almost happened awhile back right over NYC when a couple a airliners nearly hit one with a reported 8’ wingspan.

First off, this is, in my mind, an acceptable use: - It was not used in a populated area - it was used ONLY for search and rescue - it was NOT near controlled airspace - and it was used wisely (No other UAS in the area to generate possible RF interference.

Where I have a HUGE problem is the knuckle draggers who think operating their UAS amongst buildings, in controlled airspace, amongst crowds or by following someone is OK.

Being an RC hobbyist for 30+ years, I see today's MORONS as a lethal threat with they way they arrogantly use UAS.

18
posted on 08/01/2014 5:07:43 AM PDT
by Freeport
(The proper application of high explosives will remove all obstacles.)

All it is going to take is for one of these idiots to have a fatal collision with an aircraft

One of these idiots was out with his drone taking pictures of the 3800 acre fire 2 miles east of me last weekend...at the same time 10 helicopters and a DC-10 air tanker and several other air tankers were trying to keep people's houses from burning.

It's just a matter of time before some little Herkimer takes his toy drone out for a spin in the subdivision built at the end of the runway 25 years after the airport was built and takes out an engine on a 767 at takeoff.

21
posted on 08/01/2014 5:37:08 AM PDT
by eldoradude
(How many republicrats/demoblicans does it take to change a light bulb?)

The same slippery slope argument is equivalent to the argument the libtards use with guns.

It's only a matter of time before some right wing gun nut goes off and kills 200 people at the school down the street from the gun show.......

I'd prefer to let people have personal freedom and be held accountable for their actions if they cause harm to others........not rely on nany government to pass laws and rules because someone might do something.

If the idiot in your story was interfering with legitimate emergency operations, he should have been held accountable for such. We don't need a law to make all manner of hoops to jump through for everyone else.

That’s how it started with piloted aircraft around the time of WWI. They were first used for reconnaissance, and then the occasional bomb. Then you had the aircraft killers to stop the enemy’s reconnaissance, then killers to kill the killers, and thus dog-fights.

Google Earth, SPOT and the evening weather news must drive you crazy then.

Yup. So do public roads in some respects.

When I photograph a person in public, I could get sued if I published it without permission. They own the reflected light off of them.

When I spend years conditioning my property such that the reflected light off of it is a unique product, the public can not only photograph it at will and publish the content they can harass me if it does not please them. When the condition of the land becomes "public viewshed" the public has a call on what you do with every inch of my land. When they can spy on me and decide what overlapping and contradictory environmental regulations I might be violating and therefore how much I owe in the way of fines it can become a blackmail game.

Satellite photos are very useful tools to me in communicating what we have done on our property. Yet I would rather have to pay a fee for the service and be able to own the content than what Google is doing. I use it, particularly because I am not charging for my written work, but that work is done with the objective of privatizing environmental management and most of regulatory government with it, completely.

The same slippery slope argument is equivalent to the argument the libtards use with guns.

It's only a matter of time before some right wing gun nut goes off and kills 200 people at the school down the street from the gun show.......

I'd prefer to let people have personal freedom and be held accountable for their actions if they cause harm to others........not rely on nany government to pass laws and rules because someone might do something.

Hmmm, so you're an anarchist.

25
posted on 08/01/2014 7:03:08 AM PDT
by eldoradude
(How many republicrats/demoblicans does it take to change a light bulb?)

Seeing as it is apparent that you totally missed the point of the article: the drone was PRIVATELY-OWNED.

Jon Q. Public used his own personal stuff to do a good thing. You know; like when a gun owner exercising their rights under the Second Amendment uses a personal sidearm to put a criminal out of commission.

When’s the last time you bitched about anyone doing that?

When’s the last time you wrote anything about guns that runs anywhere near parallel with what you wrote about drones? I’m guessing the answer to that is “Never” because you believe that We, The People enjoy the Right To Keep And Bear Arms.

So, what about the right of the people to buy, build, own and operate their own unmanned aircraft? Or did you not make the connection to the radio-control community and realize that tens of thousands of people already do? Are you lying awake at night worrying about that guy down the street flying his R/C stuff over your house? I think not.

And here’s a different angle: did people raise a similar stink way back when the issue of public agency ownership of guns was on the table for discussion? Did anyone ever look at guns and argue that police shouldn’t have them, but the people should have unrestricted access? If that argument ever saw the light of day, it obviously didn’t get much traction.

But that’s the argument you’re trying to making about drones. Sorry, but looking around and seeing that armed police are the norm, it seems silly to argue that polices ought not have R/C aircraft, even more so since they already have helicopters and airplanes. We may be rightly uncomfortable with the cops continuing on and getting geared up with heavier and heavier weapons, and becoming militarized; it’s not what We, The People want. But nobody with any credibility is out there arguing to disarm them like the anti-RKBA set is saying to disarm all of us.

Similarly, we may not like the notion of public agencies having drone capability at a military level, but at lower levels of capability, UAV tech has great potential for successful, positive impact in many common situations encountered by public-sector agencies. There’s not any good reason to enable that.

And I ought to be clear with you about exactly what will happen if we don’t: they’ll get them, anyway, and make laws saying that private citizens can’t have one any larger than 10 pounds, or something ridiculous like that. You raise a stink about public agencies having drones for sensible use, and you’re going to get hit with blowback over private citizens being able to have them at all for ANY use. They can’t but you can? That dog don’t hunt.

The argument doesn’t work with guns; it doesn’t work with cars, airplanes, or helicopters; it doesn’t work with radio-controlled aircraft, either.

So, instead of going on some booga-booga scare-mongering diatribe about how public agencies might use really high-tech drones in oppressive ways; get personally involved in the public policy discussions to fight the emergence of stupid laws limiting private citizens’ unregulated access to ownership and usage of radio controlled craft. Get into the fight to keep private radio-controlled aircraft regulation from exploding into onerous and stupid limitations.

AND, maybe get busy building your own drone (A.K.A. radio-controlled aircraft), and equip it with anti-drone capability. A modest quad-copter capable of dropping a nylon mesh net onto the rotors of another craft would probably do.

“Drones” are “radio-controlled aircraft,” of which there are hundreds of thousands in existence, already, and have been for a half century. Any sentient being ought to have long ago figured out that, at some point, R/C craft would develop to a point that public agencies would be able to recognize some real benefit to having them, too.

Or maybe you’re ignorant of the reality that they’ve already done exactly that with airplanes and helicopters?

There’s little an R/C quad copter can do that a helicopter can’t, but it CAN do it at FAR lower cost, and at ZERO risk to a flight crew that might become the target of a suspect not wanting to be found. Not many police departments can afford to put a chopper in the air. Not many departments CAN’T afford to put an R/C recon platform in the air.

My take on it; it’s just like guns: government has them, and you, as a citizen, have the right to have them, too. The only obstacle to citizen/government parity is the number of citizens failing to exercise that right. So, get on out there and build a drone of your own; do your part to ensure citizen/government détente.

Well, despite the tenor of our other FReepers' posts, I for one am glad that a volunteer using his personalresources got into the search and scored immediately, in helping a confused and possibly medically needy person get found and get help.

No. I just believe in personal freedom versus the nanny state. If you don't, I think you're on the wrong forum.

This is a conservative forum, not a libertarian one. Conservatives generally believe in reasonable limits to personal freedom such as preventing homos from 'mentoring' children in a sexual relationship. I'll add 'drugs' to the list here too, just for fun.

I think drones are cool, and if you want one you should be able to have one. It's all in how you use it. I just think it's reasonable to have regulations forbidding using a drone to peep on your neighbors for example.

I've always wanted one of these too -

I think it's reasonable for me to have one when I can afford it but also think it's reasonable to regulate where I fire it. Don't think there's a drone big enough to lift it though.

39
posted on 08/01/2014 3:14:00 PM PDT
by eldoradude
(How many republicrats/demoblicans does it take to change a light bulb?)

“It’s just a matter of time before some little Herkimer takes his toy drone out for a spin in the subdivision built at the end of the runway 25 years after the airport was built and takes out an engine on a 767 at takeoff.”

You’re on the right track, but having investigated this since 2006, it is not little Herkimer but little Muhammad who is more likely to be the problem. Also, it is not the end of the runway but the portion of the runway further back where the plane “rotates”...an area between two points pilots call V1 and VR for large airframes like a 767.

For more details, if you are interested (and don’t mind being a bit more nervous every time you or your family fly from now on):

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